UPDATE and another sight I'd like to see again

UPDATE: Much the same, thank goodness. Eating by the clock because I have no feeling of being hungry no matter the time of day, but I know that I don't need to miss a meal. Nothing much tastes right, but I'm managing with what Lamont and Leland have bought for me lately at Fred Meyer. They're such helpful, caring guys. I am blessed. Also, thanks to each of you for your continued prayers, love, and concern.



Led by a dachshund on a leash, pedestrians cross West Burnside at SW Broadway, downtown on November 4, 2011. I waited half way up the block for a 12 or a 19 so that I could go home.

Still dreaming about our wonderful blue sky days. The Mark O. Hatfield Building, downtown Portland.

I took this photo on June 16, 2012. Look at that glorious blue sky! The leafy, green trees! They highlight the renovated Mark. O. Hatfield Building very well. Wow! I can't help myself. I love downtown Portland, Oregon! And guess what? This triangle-looking building is not on a triangle corner. Know what I mean? The streets don't make a triangle for it to fit in. It was shaped differently, going out wider towards those green trees, when it was constructed in 1910 as the Lowengart Building. In 1933-34, West Burnside was widened. That's the street where the trees are in the median. Since 1994 it's been known as the Mark O. Hatfield Building. And see the buildings up SW Broadway, the brick one with the white on it and the other brick one right beside it? That's the Benson Hotel, where Mama and I stayed on our very first visit to Portland!

At one of my favorite blogs about Portland, Vintage Portland, I found two fabulous vintage photos to share with you, all about this intersection during and after the widening of West Burnside. Enjoy yourselves! You can click twice on the vintage photos, after you've opened a particular post, and really get to see all sorts of intriguing details.

The Lowengart Building, during the widening of West Burnside, 1933. On the left of this vintage photo, in the background you'll see a multi-story building with white-framed windows, arched tops on them. That building is right behind the Benson Hotel! Remember this recent post? I took the photo in the post from the Benson Hotel. It is of the intersection where the Mark O. Hatfield Building sits--the southwest corner of West Burnside and SW Broadway.

I love this next photo, too. The empty lot is a parking lot today. You can see just the corner of it in the photo I took from the Benson Hotel because the parking garage blocks the view. In the screen shot from Google Maps, there are lots of trees in the lot with cars parked among them. The Lowengart Building, after the widening of West Burnside, 1934.

I just found a great article online, dated June 14, 2012, all about the renovation of the Mark O. Hatfield Building. Neat-o!

Renovation of Mark O. Hatfield Building updates 106 low-income housing units
The Oregonian By Molly Hottle

From the time he was a child moving from one apartment to another, Nate McCoy knew he wanted to be an architect.

He and his family would often live in rundown apartments in Portland that were available to single-parent households, like his own, and low-income residents.

“I always wondered why we couldn’t live in nicer apartments,” said McCoy, now 30.

It was those experiences that spurred his desire to become an architect for the city of Portland and to help improve the housing options for the city’s low-income residents.

In that vein, McCoy recently finished working on the rehabilitation of the Mark O. Hatfield Building, a 106-unit structure on West Burnside Street owned by Central City Concern, a Northwest Portland nonprofit. A grand reopening event was held June 7 to celebrate the renovation of the once-crumbling building.

The more than $2.5 million renovation project restored the exterior of the building and updated the heating and cooling systems. The project was quick — it lasted about seven months — and Portland contributed $846,000 in federal grant funds to the project.

The project was also funded by Central City Concern, Multnomah County, Energy Trust of Oregon, Enterprise Community Partners and the Network for Oregon Affordable Housing.

McCoy served as a development manager on the project, ensuring that developers were being paid and dealing with other financial matters. He usually works with projects in the Lents neighborhood, but the renovation of this particular building had special meaning to him.

In 2003, McCoy was given the Mark O. Hatfield Architectural Award, which provided a scholarship for his education in the architecture school at the University of Oregon. He still remembers meeting Hatfield during the award ceremony.

“He was like, ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again,’” McCoy said. “It’s crazy that after he said that, I’m working on a project with his name on it.”

Hatfield, a former Oregon governor and senator, died in August 2011 at the age of 89.

During the reopening celebration, Ed Blackburn, Central City Concern executive director, talked about Hatfield and his efforts to help the nonprofit meet paperwork and application deadlines to ensure the building could be used for low-income housing.

“That’s why it was named after” Hatfield, Blackburn said.

Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish also spoke at the ceremony about how the building gives more than just shelter for its residents. Central City Concern also provides addiction help and job services there.

“In other cities, a building like this at the intersection of Burnside and Broadway would probably either be high-end condos or the most desirable office space in the city,” Fish said. “But here in Portland, this building is home to 106 formerly homeless individuals, seeking a hand up. I think that speaks loud and clear about our values as a community.”

Upgrades made to the building include the installation of three-paned, energy-efficient windows that block noise; the implementation of a new heating system that automatically turns off when windows are opened; and the removal of a 30-year-old steam boiler and outdated electric radiators.

“If you look at it now, it really looks like South Waterfront lofts,” McCoy said.

One day, he hopes to work as a developer, creating housing for Portland’s low-income residents, and he also looks forward to helping his mother, who still lives in low-income housing, move to one of the updated buildings.

“I know people who live in these places still today, so to be able to work in the projects that help the community, to me, have so much more value than working on projects with people with deep pockets,” he said. “It all comes back to the same goal of just giving those in need most an opportunity.” 

-- Molly Hottle; Twitter: @nwpdxreporter

It's all in how you look at it.

Big Pink and a parking lot sign. The sign is on the southeast corner of SW Broadway and West Burnside. Big Pink is exactly one block east of the sign. I used the tilt feature of my camera so that I could take a satisfactory look from this unusual angle. I've cropped the photo and used the HDR-ish special effect at Picnik. By the way, Big Pink is either 536 or 546 feet tall and is the second tallest building in Portland. I found both heights on the Internet, so who knows. I do know I've been on the 30th floor, which is not the top floor, to the Portland City Grill. See views from the PCG here and here.

Sunday evening, corner of SW Broadway and SW Washington, waiting for the 15

After an excellent, exciting, wonderful SYTYCD live show, we rode the MAX from the Rose Garden into downtown. Leslie got off at the Big Pink--her significant other works on the 30th floor at the Portland City Grill; we enjoyed Happy Hour there before we rode the MAX to the show--and I continued on to Pioneer Courthouse Square where I got off and walked to this corner. I can't count the number of times that I've waited here for the last bus home, the 15, after work, after volunteering, after watching the lighting of Portland's Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving, after walking downtown streets looking for those special sights to photograph.


Looking north at the same intersection. Where I wait is beside Pazzo Ristorante which you can see there on the right corner of the photo. Just out of sight to the right and around the corner on SW Washington, I wait in front of two huge windows which are in the bar section of the restaurant. There's an awning and lots of light at that particular spot, a perfect place to wait for a bus in the evening. The irony of how often I wait here rests on the 11th floor of the white and brick building on the left side of the photo--the one with the well-lighted exterior stairwell. That's the Benson Hotel, the place where Mama and I stayed for our first visit to Portland in 2004, from June 30 through July 9. We never had to turn on the air conditioner, never had to shut the windows AND there were not any screens. No bugs, no mosquitoes, no humidity. I mean I knew I wanted to move to Portland when we got off the airplane and onto the MAX for the ride to the Benson, but the fact that we didn't have to turn on the AC, that we didn't have screens, that we never saw a bug--wow! Totally sold me and planted the seed of moving here firmly in Mama's mind.

Shooting "Leverage" at the Schnitz, downtown

Could you be this laid back high above busy SW Broadway in downtown Portland?


See what I mean by high above Broadway? He's waiting until his next move, ensconced on a crane in front of the building where I've been to see Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, the Beatles tribute band 1964, and Sting. Here's a bit about the building:
The beautifully restored Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall opened in 1984, and was originally the Portland Public Theatre, built in 1928. The Italian Rococo Revival architecture was said to be the national showcase of Rapp & Rapp, renowned Chicago theatre architects. Visitors are greeted by a 65 foot high “Portland” sign above the Broadway Marquee, which contains approximately 6,000 theatrical lights. You can read more from Wikipedia about the Schnitz at the link in the caption below.


These two lights are trained on the lobby of the venerable building, what many consider to be the anchor of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The Portland sign has 5 foot tall neon letters.

"Leverage," seen on TNT, has filmed all around downtown for its second and third seasons. All I've ever managed to see are equipment trucks, cast trailers, and lights on cranes. I've never been to Boston, but Portland is standing in for Boston on this series.

Conjecture bait.

So what if I'm a slow, 62-year-old woman who sees something very interesting across the busy street and instantly realizes I cannot get across the street in time to get the lowdown. I can get the camera on and up and snap this photo. I might not know what is on the flier he's handing out on SW Broadway, but I can conjecture, not only about the green hat guy wearing the red shoes but also about that huge inflatable monkey. Conjecture, as a verb? To arrive at or deduce by conjecture which means, as a noun, inference from defective or presumptive evidence or a conclusion deduced by surmise or guesswork. Ah.

Would you be willing to put your conjectures about the scene captured by the D50 and me in a comment? Gee, I hope so. I'll be back in the next few days to share mine.

Sidewalk Shot

Taken in front of The Heathman Hotel and Restaurant on SW Broadway. The street you can see in the background is SW Salmon. I couldn't resist the regal-looking dog and the straightforward message on the sign.

On display, No. 4

Interesting juxtaposition of undergarment stores, first Jane's Vanity at 521 SW Broadway, then Under U 4 Men at 507 SW Broadway. What's that about?





I'm curious if you have undergarment specialty stores in your city?

East side of the Fox Tower and a bit of the Jackson Tower

As you read in Friday's post: The building is most notable for the contrast between its curving east side and boxy west side. The juxtaposing angles of the building create a unique shape from nearly every angle. This multiplanar and set-back design is meant to prevent as much of the building's shadow as possible from falling upon Pioneer Courthouse Square on the opposite corner.

I took the photo from Pioneer Courthouse Square last Saturday, about 4 p.m. I didn't notice a dark shadow cast by the building, just a shaded ambience in the block-sized square. People were everywhere, reading, walking, sitting, talking on their phones, enjoying being outside in Portland.

Here's a photo from the corner of SW Washington and Broadway, looking south, showing how neat the Jackson Tower looks at night. I took it in February, 2007, so I'm not sure why the clock face is bathed in green light.


From Wikipedia:
The Jackson Tower, formerly the Oregon Journal Building is a glazed terra-cotta historic office building in downtown Portland, Oregon. Located on the corner of Broadway and Yamhill Streets, it enjoys a prominent location adjacent to Pioneer Courthouse Square.

The building was constructed to house the operations of the now-defunct Oregon Journal. The Journal occupied the structure from its completion in 1912 until July 4, 1948, when the newspaper moved to larger quarters on the Portland waterfront. The structure was renamed Jackson Tower to honor the newspaper's founder, Charles Samuel Jackson. The impressive clock tower results from the practice of newspapers integrating such structures into their headquarters. Additionally, 1,800 light bulbs illuminate the tower after dark. The Jackson Tower was renovated in 1972, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places (as the Journal Building) in 1996.

* Each of the 1,800 light bulbs screw directly into the facade.
* In addition to the tower's illumination, at one time the clocks used to chime every 15 minutes.
* Each clockface is 12.5 feet in diameter.

Architectural style: Beaux Arts.

By the way, I'm sick with some sort of flu or something that started yesterday evening. I don't think I'll be commenting--maybe later on if I stop aching all over.

Pray for those impacted by Ike as it continues its path across the country.

Thursday, July 31, 2008 - Trio Tells a Tale

So, walking north on SW Broadway after one of the Music on Main Street concerts, I noticed a young couple step closer to a store window display at Mario's. I looked at what had them looking, then pulled the camera out of the rolling black bag because I know a photo opportunity when I see one. And this one wasn't going anywhere. I took my time, shooting the troop of monkeys, photographically, of course.

Here we have three somewhat traditional-looking sock monkeys. Look closely with your eyes wide open. They're telling you something, and I'll bet you've heard it before.

Here's another view.

ABC Wednesday – U is for under U 4 men

Check out the designer underwear and swimwear at Under U 4 Men, 507 SW Broadway, downtown Portland. I've not been in the store since the only men in my life are my two grown sons who have their own ideas about their underwear, and a 14-year-old miniature dachshund name Duncan who doesn't bother with underwear. Still and all, I couldn't pass up the perfect U photo, complete with Christmas balls and boughs of green.

Here's an article about the store from the Willamette Week (an alternative paper, one of Portland's multitude of free newspapers):

"Under Where? A new downtown store hopes to get in your drawers.

BY BYRON BECK | bbeck at wweek dot com
[November 29th, 2006] Is Portland, and the rest of the nation, ready for a Victoria's Secret for men?

Steven Lien thinks so.

I'm not surprised. Twenty years ago, I worked for the now 50-year-old Lien at his used sporting-goods store, Sports Exchange (it was where Spartacus now stands). I've always known Lien to be an astute retailer. He taught me the proper way to sell ski equipment—including a slightly improper way to fit ski boots on hot men—even though I'd never spent a day on the slopes. After I quit in '86, we lost contact; I'd heard he'd gone on to co-own a nightclub. So I was stunned last week when I strolled into a still under-construction shop downtown and found him behind the counter.

"Men's underwear is underrepresented in Oregon," Lien said when I asked him why he was opening a store devoted to the most intimate of apparels. "I thought I might make it into a Web-only-based business, but underwear is tactile. I needed to open a brick-and-mortar shop."

That's what he and his partner, Larry Laughead, have done with Under U 4 Men.

Located just steps from Jane's Vanity, an upscale lingerie women's outlet, Under U 4 Men features men's unmentionables from cool vendors like C-IN2 and Ginch Gonch (QW, April 26, 2006) in fabrics from bamboo, hemp, soy and milk, priced from $12 to $45. It also features live male models in their skivvies on two different platforms (Lien trolled Craigslist for candidates) and scantily clad shop workers.

Is Lien pouring thousands of dollars into this venture just to see men in the buff, or is this just the ultimate dream sequence from Sex and the City? Well, neither.

Lien says he's spent two years researching the market, and he believes now's the time for a Victor's Secret. Only in the past decade, he says, has this men's-furnishings category gone beyond such stalwart basics as Hanes and Jockey—as well as once hot but now mainstream brands like Calvin Klein or Polo—to embrace more form-fitting gear. His hope is to open more stores in the near future, with plans of eventually going nationwide. For now though he'll focus on the downtown boutique. And it's interesting he chose downtown for his very first locale.

"Most men's underwear is bought by women," says Lien on why he and Laughead chose Southwest Broadway over Stark Street, or any other queer-centric thoroughfare that might be more accustomed to seeing nearly naked men through store windows. "That's why we didn't want it to be on Gay Street, U.S.A." To that end, Liens also doesn't plan on carrying thongs, jockstraps or other stripper-friendly items.

Still, this might be one of the sexiest stores to open in Portland. And it'll bring a new meaning to your holiday package."

Here's a photo I took the night after Thanksgiving when Flat Stanley and I had gone to Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Christmas tree lighting. See those people walking on the sidewalk on the right side of SW Broadway? They're almost in front of under U for men--it's the chartreuse-colored store, just past Marx Jewelers.

Around town with Mama

I don’t want y’all thinking that I’m the only member of my Mississippi-to-Oregon-transplanted family out and about in Portland. My 81-year-old Mama gets her licks in.

Periodically I plan to post photos of her enjoying Portland. Sometimes she’ll have her sidekick with her, Duncan the darling dachshund—he’s a miniature, almost 14 years old.

Here she is, earlier this summer, downtown at the corner of SW Broadway and Washington, talking with two men who work at the Marriott. Like a lot of us Southerners, she’s talking with her hands as well as her mouth!